


Six Ways

by lowflyingfruit



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 22:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15277494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowflyingfruit/pseuds/lowflyingfruit
Summary: Months after the Snap, the original Avengers share a plan to save the world from Thanos. Retroactively.





	Six Ways

“Six of us. Six Infinity Stones,” Stark said.

They’d seen each other just once in person, in the months since the Snap. That first time, Steve had seen a man broken. Tony had been injured, a gut wound, but the way he’d moved, the way he’d said _I’m sorry, Cap_ and barely heard Steve’s own apology in return…It had been Tony’s new friend, the alien Nebula, who said that Tony had watched that kid, Spiderman, dissolve in his arms. These days, everyone understood how that hurt. Everyone understood that Thanos didn’t have to turn people to dust to destroy them. Steve had looked at Tony and known he wasn’t coming back from that.

Or he’d _thought_ that Tony wasn’t coming back from that. This man, bounding around his lab with the same energy and focus of the man Steve had always admired, he might not be Iron Man again but he was definitely a lot closer to it.

“That bastard, he said that when he was done, he’d retire. And he was _honest_ , Steve, he really meant it. I’ve been putting my head together with Bruce and Shuri, and Thor got us into contact with that giant friend of his out in Nidavellir, and from what we can tell, Thanos dismantled the Gauntlet and scattered the stones. That means -“

“We can get them,” Steve finished. “And…what then? What do we do with them?”

“We use them,” Tony said, eyes burning. “Let me tell you what’s been going on, first.”

 

—

 

“I think,” Tony said, “I think there might be something we can do, here.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Bruce said. He rubbed a hand on his forehead in the I-have-such-a-headache gesture Tony hadn’t seen in years; the Asgardian magi-tech projecting his image shuddered a little and glowed oddly at the movement. They were still having a bit of trouble adapting to Earth materials.

“This is a crazy plan,” Shuri agreed. Her hologram wasn’t quite so crisp, but it was steadier. “Not the good kind of crazy, either.”

“But we _can_ do it, right? It’s just a question of whether we should?”

And they definitely should. It took, what, thirty seconds of thinking to realise it was for the best if none of this had ever happened?

The best two human science buddies Tony had ever had looked at him blankly, then each other, and said, “Probably.”

“Great!” Tony said, and hauled out a tablet to start sketching. “We don’t know if the shape and size of the gauntlet are significant, so Bruce, you’re hanging out with the Asgardians, right, if you could get across what they know about it while Shuri and I figure out how to actually harness all that energy - there’s so much of it -“

“- Infinite, I think,” Shuri said, but she was jotting down notes too.

“- but the Gauntlet has to be the first step. At least we don’t have to totally reinvent the glove.” Shuri let out a nervous giggle; she did that, that was how she coped. “Hopefully we can get around the engineering problems.”

“If we need any star-forges restarted, we know who to ask,” Bruce said. Tony recognised that tone of voice. Bruce was warming up to the idea as well. Intellectually, even if he still had reservations over that pesky _should we do this_ issue. “I’ll ask around and see if I can translate the answers out of magic-speak. Rocket's good with this sort of thing.”

“As long as it doesn’t blow up when we try to use it,” Tony agreed.

It was a feat Tony could barely conceive of. He supposed it didn’t have to be a glove. Would an Infinity Keyboard work? As long as they could input commands some way, without the aforementioned blowing up. The interface was going to be a nightmare and a half. At least he knew it could be done, since someone had done it, and if they could do it he could too. Especially with Bruce and Shuri to help. Shuri was already totally lost in the idea, from the looks of it, and Wakandan pop music was blasting full force from speakers her side.

Bruce interrupted his own train of thought. “And the Stones? That’s not a minor problem, Tony.”

He barely looked up. “We find them and bring them back,” he said. “They’re not the most subtle things out there, from what I saw. We split up and work on it while we build our Gauntlet or proto-Gauntlet or whatever we can manage.”

“Tony -“

“Bruce,” Tony replied. He shoved his chair back across the room, out of sight of the webcam for a second. There were a bunch of computers there that Tony hadn’t touched in years, yet under the circumstances hadn’t been able to get rid of, holding a program he hadn’t used in even longer. He hadn’t needed to. “We’ve got this,” he called to Bruce, checking that everything was still in working order. “You remember how we found the sceptre. We’ll boost the range of my first program, and ta-da, that’s one Infinity Stone taken care of.”

When he turned back, there was an unreadable expression on Bruce’s face. “I’d almost forgotten,” he said. He sighed, and discreetly motioned to put Shuri on mute for a second. “Tony, are you going to be okay?”

“Okay?” Tony laughed. “I haven’t been okay for years. I _saw_ Thanos’ forces in New York, when I dropped that nuke off in space, and knowing that was out there, all that out there, not caring, willing to kill us just because we’re here - it’s been eating me alive. It _ate_ me alive, because all that bad stuff’s already been here and we already lost. I am not okay. But now that we have a plan, I will be. We can _fix_ this, Bruce. We can make it right.”

He barely heard Bruce’s reply, mind already spinning through plans for the Gauntlet and how it would interact with the Stones. They should get the sceptre back, if they could. And whatever SHIELD had once known about containing the Tesseract. They could work this out.

 

—

 

“I worry it’s too much power,” Bruce said bluntly.

Betty’s gravestone didn’t answer. At least she had one. Her bastard of a father was good for something, at last. He couldn’t help but come here, though, when he had something that needed thinking through, because Betty would have known what to say.

“Tony - Tony is a great man, and his heart is in the right place, but he’s not perfect, and he does get tunnel vision. I never did hear what you thought of Ultron, but trust me, that was such a Tony thing. The best of intentions, not so much falling apart on him as blowing right up.”

Betty would have laughed and said that it sounded like Bruce himself. Bruce thought it was her and Tony who were more alike. For instance, both of them would have said _raging daddy issues_ at that very suggestion.

In the quiet greenness of the cemetery, someone sobbed. There were always people in cemeteries these days. There were always people crying. Bruce tried to imagine Betty sitting across from him all the harder, to shut out the grief of the people around him and just for a second, think on what a better person than him might do. He continued, “I worry that he thinks too much of me. He’s always trusted me not to lose control. But I _do_ lose control. I lost control for two years. I have no idea how many people the Hulk killed in the meantime, but if he, I, was in some sort of fucked-up arena fighting ring, there were deaths.” Anything else was just wishful thinking. “That’s not the sort of person you want to give an infinity _anything_ to.”

They knew what an Infinity Stone could do to a regular person. Or raccoon. Thor’s friend Rocket had told them about the time he’d helped his friends control one. _We almost freakin’ died, that’s what_ , Rocket said. _I grabbed it last and it felt like every last cell was bursting. If it wasn’t for Quill and Gamora -_

And then Rocket had gone horribly quiet. Quill and Gamora were two of his friends, the former killed in the Snap, the latter also murdered by Thanos, according to her sister Nebula.

For everyone who broke down in tears, there were two more who choked them back in public. Bruce wasn’t one of the people Rocket allowed to see him cry.

The long and the short of it was that they didn’t have many people who could handle Infinity Stones without the safety gear Tony and Shuri were still working on, and Bruce was on that short list. He was going to have to get involved, as backup if nothing else.

He drew the line at ever operating the Gauntlet. Or “Gauntlet”; Tony and Shuri were still thinking along the lines of an Infinity Supercomputer. It didn’t have the same ring to it, but as Tony said, it didn’t have to, it just had to fix things. That sort of power wasn’t for him. He didn’t even know what it meant to “fix everything.”

“I might be lucky,” Bruce told Betty’s grave. “You’re the only one I lost this time.” For all he loved her, he didn’t feel the need to break the universe to get her back. He’d lost her long ago, and he knew that she wouldn’t want him to break himself to get her back.

Soft footsteps came up behind him. A courtesy. Nobody heard Natasha if she didn’t want them to. “We should go,” she said quietly. “Thaddeus Ross doesn’t hold much sacred these days. I doubt he’ll hold back because of mourners.”

Bruce stood up. “Oh, for the good old days, when it was only me he wanted hunted down and killed.”

They walked out of the cemetery side by side, not quite touching. They’d missed their moment. Story of Bruce’s love life. At least Natasha was still here, and she was still his friend. Not dust in the breeze. “I know that look,” Natasha said. “Are you going to bow out?”

“I didn’t run before,” he pointed out.

“It’s not self-defence this time,” Natasha replied. “If we attract Thanos’ attention, we’ll be taking the fight to him. From what I’ve seen, you’re doing well in New Asgard.” She knew it as well as he did. Thanos had taken less from him than just about anyone else.

“Asgardians aren’t usually scared of the Other Guy,” he said. “They get the whole berserker thing, and most of them are physically strong enough to cope. If I ever Hulked out in an Asgardian town, they could deal with the Other Guy before he got too out of hand. It’s…I haven’t felt so safe in a long time.” They didn’t treat him like a grenade about to go off. Hell, they treated him like a _hero_. He was, of all things, a respected member of the community.

“Nobody would blame you for not wanting to leave.”

Nobody but Bruce himself. “I would,” he said. “On Sakaar, I told Thor that Banner was powerful and useful too, when it came to fighting evil beings. Can’t just say that without backing it up.” He sighed heavily, remembering jumping out of a spaceship and falling face-first on the rainbow bridge. “I can help. So I should.”

 

—

 

“I’ll make it happen,” Natasha said, and ended the call.

Natasha had learned how to compartmentalise when she was young. Put your emotions to one side until it was safe to deal with them. Focus on the work first. Anything less could get you killed.

They were months into the post-Snap world, and Natasha still didn’t think it was safe to stop partitioning things off. She missed Sam. Sam would have known how to deal with this better. She missed Wanda. Wanda had suffered enough. Her heart broke for Steve, who wasn’t getting any worse but wasn’t getting any better, either. Clint - he’d lost everyone, and didn’t want comfort from anyone right now. He would later, whether that later was in days or years, and Natasha would be ready.

And in the meantime, there was just so much to do.

Steve, wonderful man, was busy looking out for others. With Bucky and Sam gone, that left Natasha to look out for Steve. Someone had to.

For the moment, that meant not telling him about Stark’s wild plan. Hope was a dangerous thing, and she didn’t think Steve could take another loss. Or even another failure to gain.

Natasha headed out into the streets of Wakanda’s capital, which even months afterwards were a strange mixture of deserted in places and frantic in others. The school-slash-childcare centre and the food bank were jam-packed. The office buildings were empty, and starting to show signs of serious neglect. And this was in _Wakanda_. Prosperous, technologically advanced, organised Wakanda. Other places were far worse off. It took a little while, but she found Steve on a farm slated for reclamation, helping to harvest what could be harvested, and to move machinery and dangerous chemicals to the farms that were still operating. Crumbling skyscrapers, crops rotting in the ground, unprepared people scrambling for their next meal - Thanos’ vision of prosperity and plenty.

Steve smiled at her when he saw her; it only looked a little strained today. “Nat,” he greeted her.

“I need to visit New Asgard,” she said. “Thor’s having politics trouble and wants some advice. I’ll be back in a few days.” Not, strictly speaking, true. Thor was always having politics trouble, that bit was true. The UN’s Accords people sometimes had trouble recognising that the vast majority of the surviving Asgardians, physically sturdy and strong as they were, were not warriors but traumatised civilians, while Thor was a) not one of nature’s politicians and b) fiercely protective of his few hundred remaining people.

Steve didn’t question it. They’d spent a lot of time together in the past few years. Steve knew that occasionally she didn’t tell him things, especially when they were more personal. But he trusted her to have his back, which she did, all the way, and he trusted her to return, which she would.

What Bruce had called her in for was to help manage _Thor_. Natasha was good at managing people.

The trip to New Asgard was a clear one, which wasn’t always the case. Natasha, like all the original Avengers and many people who lived and worked near Stark Tower, was a veteran of unexpected thunderstorms. This time it was fine and sunny for the entirety of the short flight across Wakanda to the parcel of land that was now New Asgard.

Unlike the capital, which had its dead spots, New Asgard was a small enough town that it was a hive of activity, all the time. Thor had a lot to do with that. He spent most of his waking hours working, Bruce said. Helping with food and housing, hearing disputes, charming better rates out of merchants, scaring off sightseers.

When he wasn’t working, he was practicing with his new axe.

Natasha found him talking to a pair of architects, debating the construction of a new hall for schooling their surviving children (who were actually about half their numbers). She waited until he was done, and then said, “Thor.”

The departing architects bristled, far more touchy about their king’s dignity than he was, but Thor just smiled and said, “Lady Natasha. What brings you here?”

“I needed to speak to you,” she said.

He sighed heavily. “I fear I am due to hear the arborists about their crops,” he said. “I have only a few minutes to spare.”

That was exactly what Bruce had been getting for the past few days. Hence calling her in, and hence the desperate measures. Natasha said, “It’s about Thanos.”

Thor’s expression did not change from its pleasant smile. Above them, the sun went out. If Steve was heartbreaking and Tony had been broken, Thor scared her sometimes. Only Tony’s friend Nebula hated Thanos more than Thor did. And even Nebula couldn’t impose her hatred on the heavens themselves.

“What about Thanos?” Thor said, as the gathering clouds darkened from grey to black.

“Stark’s thought of a plan. We need some favours.”

“Name them and I will see them done,” Thor said immediately, and rain started to fall.

She missed Wanda. She missed Sam. She missed seeing her friends happy. She wanted the time to grieve properly, she wanted not to have to grieve at all. Once she’d told Thor’s brother that she didn’t weep for fallen regimes, but now Natasha was finding that she’d liked the world better the way it was before.

 

—

 

“I will go as far as I have to,” Thor said. “It presents little difficulty for me. Whatever is needed.”

A gesture with Stormbreaker opened the Bifrost, taking him from New Asgard to the general area in which Lady Natasha believed Barton to be living at the moment. Their comrade separated himself from others in his grief, Natasha had explained, and Barton had lost his entire family.

All the more reason why Barton might want a role in this plan. Thor was familiar with grief, now. Hate was better. Hate kept you moving. He would see Asgard live and Thanos die, and that would be enough for him. However long he himself had to live, however far he had to travel, _he would see Thanos die_.

If the fates were kind, he would do it himself. Next time, Stormbreaker would split Thanos’ skull.

Thor had seen little of the United States since the Snap. He had met with some few of their rulers and representatives, but he had not the luxury to travel through this area of Midgard. It was night, here, but even in the darkness the changes were apparent. Thor walked carefully, for the roads were starting to crumble. Where once he might have seen the lights of cities, he could see the stars. Not Asgard’s stars, but beautiful nevertheless. He kept thunder in the air, in the hopes that Barton would come to him. Thor did not want to tarry long here. There was work to do and a Titan to kill.

_You should have aimed for the head._

Even if this plan of Stark’s truly would undo the Snap, Thanos still had to die. Undoing the Snap would not erase all Thanos’ crimes. Loki, Heimdall, half the initial survivors of Asgard - they had to be avenged.

He walked for near an hour in the darkness with the rumble of thunder overhead, until at last he saw headlights, then heard a car and a familiar voice. “Thor? That you?”

“Barton! Yes, it is I. I bring news.” Barton opened the door of the car for him, and Thor crammed himself inside. He was not fond of these mortal contraptions, but he could bear them. “First, though, I am sorry for your losses.”

Barton’s family, dead, because Thor had stopped to gloat. The good lady who had given them shelter in their need. Innocent children. _You should have aimed for the head._

“We’ve all got them,” Barton said, voice hoarse. He faced the road, as was proper for a driver, but out of the corner of his eye Thor could see that the very mention produced a suspicious shine in Barton’s own eyes. “Man, you look different. I’ve seen you on TV a few times, but - even just the hair.”

“Many people have commented favourably on it,” Thor said. Hair grew back. Eyes could be replaced. Even Asgard could be rebuilt so long as its people survived. If his sister were here he would laugh at her, thinking herself a goddess of death. Foolishness and arrogance. “I might as well keep it short for the time being.”

“More practical, too,” Barton agreed. “Don’t think we never saw you get your ponytail stuck in your mouth during training, back when you had it real long.”

“My friend, there are none living whose sight I doubt less than yours.”

The whole ride back to Barton’s habitation they did not speak of weighty matters. It had been some years since they’d seen each other. They had trivialities aplenty to fill the time, and Thor had missed Barton as he’d missed his other friends on Midgard. But as with every other interaction in this world after Thanos, the question of who had been lost and how much grief it caused hung over them.

When they at last pulled up Thor said, “I don’t have much more time here. I need to tell you the news - if you agree, I can drop you off with Natasha - but either way I have other places to be.”

“I get it,” Barton said. “King stuff. So spill.”

Thor told him what Natasha in her turn had imparted to him, and watched Barton’s face go white with shock. “What say you?” he asked.

“Take me to Nat,” he said. “Please. Shit, hang on, just let me grab a few things.”

Thor waited. Barton did not pack much.

“What about you?” Barton asked, as he threw things into a bag. “What’s your part in this?”

“The same as the rest of us,” he said. “Find the Infinity Stones. Though I need to make a visit to Nidavellir after I take you to Wakanda.”

“It’s just - this is incredible,” Barton said.

Thor clapped a hand to his friend’s shoulder, heart lighter than it had been in many months. The constant whispering in his mind, _you should have aimed for the head_ , seemed to grow fainter when faced with Barton’s hope. “With luck,” he said, “The end of this nightmare is in sight.”

 

—

 

“It turns out my family might not have to stay dead,” Clint said, walking into Nat and Steve’s secret Wakandan clubhouse.

Steve said, “I’m sorry, what?”

“My family might not have to stay dead,” Clint repeated. He’d been saying it again and again in his head from the minute Thor explained; the trip on the Bifrost had been almost nothing compared to that dizzying hope. “Hell, Steve, just about _everyone’s_ family might not have to stay dead.” Not that he could say that to Thor, though, because not only was _his_ family staying dead, but Clint was fucking glad Loki was gone. Props to him for saving his brother, best thing he ever did, but Clint’s only sorrow there was on his friend’s behalf. “Oh, and hi. Long time no see. Thor was right about your beard, it _does_ look like his.”

“It wasn’t meant to, it just sort of happened - “ Steve started, and then, “- no, wait, what _is_ this you’re talking about?”

Clint frowned. “I thought you and Stark made up? Didn’t he tell you? He’s got this plan to undo the Snap. Not just kill Thanos, _undo the Snap_. No dust. Everyone back.”

“What? No!”

“Yeah! Thor told me, but Nat told him, and she and Bruce have been trying to get him to stop running himself ragged and listen for a bit, and Bruce was working with Tony from the start, I mean, what else do you expect from those two.”

If it worked, his kids - god, his kids. They might be fucked up a bit if they remembered, which he hoped to god was not a thing that would happen, but they’d be alive again. He could see them. Hold them. They’d get to grow up and get degrees and get married or whatever the hell they wanted to do. And Laura. Her too. The world was a bleaker place without her, and the work he did, whatever work it was, that much harder to bear. He’d wanted to grow old with her, and now he might get the chance -

He felt like crying. He _was_ crying. Crying like a baby in front of Captain America. “Sorry, Cap,” he said, choked up and wiping his eyes.“You know how it is.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, a bit choked up himself. “Yeah, I know how it is.”

Steve was the one who got the tissues and a glass of water for him. Clint managed to stop his tears eventually. “So what’s this plan?” he asked. “It sounds like the sort of thing I might want to get in on.”

“Oh, it’s nice and simple, you’ll like it. Find Infinity Stones, use Infinity Stones. I don’t know the exact mechanics of what Stark’s planning - going back in time or what - but if their power is really infinite, it shouldn’t be _too_ much of a problem.”

The hope hurt, but it was the good sort of hurt, like when a cut started itching and aching. Clint wanted to go out there right now and start hunting Infinity Stones. The sooner they did that, the sooner he’d have his family back. He could see them in his mind’s eye, and this time it wasn’t Cooper’s fear as he watched his fingertips starting to dissolve, or the way Laura fell and hit her head because her feet were the first to go, or the memory of how Little Nat’s scream had wheezed and then suddenly cut off. He could almost see them smiling.

“You aren’t worried about the risks?” Steve asked.

“Not for me,” Clint said. “I don’t want to dust the other half the universe, but if I die trying to do this I’ve done a good thing.”

“You don’t have any concerns about infinite power or the like?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Clint said. “Say what you like about Stark’s efforts in practice, but he tries, yeah? To do the right thing. They’re my _family_ , Steve. Our friends too. I’d rather throw myself into the deepest pit there is than not try to save them.”

 

—

 

“It’s time you told me what’s going on,” Steve said. “I don’t like being out of the loop like this.”

It had been a while since Steve felt like he was leading _this_ group of Avengers. The originals, minus Tony at the moment, and the four of them lined up in front of him looking maybe a little bit ashamed. Not that ashamed, more like they’d made a mess in the kitchen and hadn’t cleaned it up. It turned out that even Rocket and Okoye had found out about this plan before Steve.

“I thought you knew,” Thor said.

“I _told_ you,” Clint said.

“Um,” said Bruce. “Yeah, about that.”

Natasha was the one who looked unrepentant. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up,” she said. “Just in case the plan didn’t work out.”

“Just in case Tony and I couldn’t control our tempers,” Steve said. “This is more important than any one of us. Way more important.” He looked Natasha in the eyes. She’d been a rock for him, and it was hard to begrudge her holding on to what she could. Nat had so little of her own. “You don’t have to protect me like this, Nat.”

Nat inclined her head slightly. “I’m not that sorry, Steve. I know what Bucky means to you. Sam and Wanda too.”

In the end, they both knew he wasn’t like Clint. Clint could embrace the hope of having his family back, and maybe survive losing that hope. Steve couldn’t have been that unreservedly happy about it. He wouldn’t dare believe for a long time. Not many good things happened to him, especially not in the modern world, and if he risked believing it, he was in trouble.

Natasha said, _means_ to you. Not _meant_. Natasha, sensible and practical and who tried not to grieve for her friends too openly in case they thought they couldn't rely on her anymore.

He was in trouble.

“But you will assist us,” Thor said, all rock-solid certainty. “This is how it should be. The six of us first became a team to defeat one of Thanos’ schemes. Now the six of us will finish it.” Beside him, Bruce was nodding.

Steve looked at them all, tried not to feel hurt about being protected like that - not when he wasn’t the only one hurting, not by a long shot - and said, “I need to think about it for a bit.”

They let him go. They let him think. They were good people, all of them.

He didn’t like this plan. He didn’t like the Infinity Stones. He didn’t like the Gauntlet. It was too close to playing God for his liking. The things that it could do were terrifying and he didn’t want to see that sort of power in anyone’s hands, literally or metaphorically. How was this even going to work if they succeeded? Would they bring the dead back, or make it so the Snap never happened?

If they made it so the Snap never happened, how far back could they go? All the way back to World War Two? Could the Gauntlet send him back to where he belonged? Could it let him save Bucky, meet Peggy for that dance?

No. Too much power. He shouldn’t even go near it.

His feet took him to the site of the last confrontation with Thanos. The trees were still broken, here, just starting to get a weathered look. Had it really been months? It seemed like yesterday. The nightmares were every bit as vivid as they had been the first night. Every night he crouched down and what was left of Bucky just ran through his fingers.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t have stopped Thanos. It was that they _hadn’t_ stopped Thanos. If Thor had aimed his blow a bit better, at the head or the arm. If the people on Titan had got Thanos’ evil magic glove off him. Nebula said that her sister had given up the Soul Stone’s location for her sake. If they’d managed to get the Mind Stone out of Vision sooner and destroy it in a way Thanos couldn’t simply rewind.

If they’d been better prepared. If they’d fought together rather than fighting amongst themselves first.

If, if, if.

Bucky died right here, and Steve could have done something about it before it got to this point. The last person who knew him, who knew _Steve_ without the idea of Captain America on top, the last person who got what it was like back then, who’d been there through the worst. Bucky had deserved better than what he’d got.

Steve could have done something. Steve could still do something.

Say what you like about Tony’s efforts in practice, but he tried to do the right thing. He was a good man. And this wasn’t Natasha’s plan, or Thor’s or Clint’s or even Bruce’s. It was Tony’s. If he wanted to find out what was going on, he needed to speak to Tony.

Steve knew better than most that time didn’t heal all wounds, but there was a chance that it might heal some.

 

—

 

“Six of us. Six Infinity Stones,” Steve said. “It’s not like I don’t see the logic there. We each take responsibility for finding one.”

“Including their disposal when we’re done,” Stark said. “We never tell each other what we do with them. I don’t think we’ve got any proto-Thanos figures in our gang, but better safe than sorry.”

“And how is this going to work?” Steve asked. “What, exactly, are we going to be using this Gauntlet to do?”

Tony flicked through some files on his desktop nervously, translucent Starktech displays flickering. Even Stark couldn’t read that fast. “I’ve been thinking. I don’t really like our name anymore.”

“The Avengers?”

“Yeah. See, it means that we let the bad guy do bad stuff to us first, and then we make it better after the fact. It made sense at the time, but this is some really bad stuff that we let get done to us.” He looked up at Steve, and he was anything but a broken man now. Iron Man at his best. “I say this time we don’t avenge the Earth. This time we protect it.”


End file.
